The Room

When I woke up, all that was there was a still darkness surrounding me. The room was dark and gloomy, well what I could see of the room. When I went towards the candle, all the corner where it sat was covered in cobwebs. The room must have been empty for years. As in bent to pick up the candle I noticed a tape player on the table. I pressed the play button and a voice echoed around the room.
“Hello, I guess you are wondering why you are here, if you follow the instructions you will get out, oh and one more thing DO NOT try any of the keys on the door to this room, they will not work and you will die”. Under the tape player was a piece of paper, on it where these words, 5 there are , 4 will die, Only one will escape with their life, it looked like it had been written in blood. A groan came from behind me, I turned around and on the floor there was another person who was starting to come to. This stranger had long, dark hair, his face was too dark to see properly, but in the candle light it looked long and grey. When he finally stood up he was tall and quiet slim. His clothes were dark but that may be due to the poor lighting within the room.
“Where am “, he said, I replied
“Locked in a room with no way out and all we have is a tape player with a strange voice recorded on it and a riddle on a piece of paper”

The stranger came towards me and introduced himself,
“I’m Jareth, what is your name?”
“I’m Jane”. We heard heavy breathing coming from the darkest corner of the room.
“W...w...w...w..w.what was that?”, Jareth asked with a nervous stutter. I turned around quickly and another person was appearing from the dark. As the light fell upon a face you could tell it was a woman, with long black looking hair, her eyes shone in the candle light like cats would in your car headlights in the dead of night. I held out the candle and saw her face a little better, she was of a pale complexion. Her clothes looked bright but her shoes were dull, covered in mud. I said angrily at her,
“You scared the life out of us, why did you creep up on as, it was rather a stupid thing to do”
“I am sorry but I was wondering where I was and then I noticed you two wandering around” she explained.
“I do not know where we are, there are three of us now, that riddle, strange, there must be two more people somewhere” I said confusingly.
“What are you on about Jane?” Jareth asked
“Can you remember that riddle I told you about Jareth?”
“What riddle? And by the way my name is Jenny”
“I found a piece of paper under the tape player (which was still in my hand) and on it was a riddle, it said 5 there are, 4 will die, and only one will escape with their life. Do you know what it might mean?”
“I do Jane and Jareth look, there are three of us now who have awoken and there must still be two asleep, don’t you understand” Jenney exclaimed.
“Understand what?” I said confused.
“I understand” said Jareth.
“It said there are 5, well there must be five of us in here, so one of us is going to see all the others die of course.”

The three of us went over to where the two bodies were lying on the floor and they started to move, a man and a woman. They were lying together like a married couple in bed. The man had very short, light hair, his face looked gaunt in the poor light. The lady had long, blonde hair and a peculiar looking face, more like a bear’s than a human’s. It was round and even, her clothing was all white. They introduced themselves as Janet and Joe. I told them about the riddle and played the tape as well. Then I realised one of my pockets had something in it. It was a white envelope with my name on it.
“Open it then” Janet said with a wired kind of excitement in her voice.
“What happens if it is a trap, I could be the first to die” I replied. I opened it anyway and read out what it said.
“There are five J’s in the room, two tell the truth and !lies and the other cannot make their mind up, this does not include yourself.” With the letter was a blank piece of paper and a pen. I jotted all our names down on the paper. I crossed my name out as the letter said I was not included in the list. I worked out earlier that Jareth could not make his mind up from our conversation earlier, so I crossed his name out. I also worked out that Jenny was one of the two who told the truth so her name was crossed out as well. I now had to decide which of the others told the truth and which one told lies.
“Are you looking for something Joe?” I asked as he stared intently into the darkness, he replied
“I am trying to find a way out of here”, I believed him but before I made up my mind I asked Janet,
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing” she replied as she looked nervously around
“Just standing here listening to you”. I now realised that Janet was lying. We all went to the other side of the room when we learned that Janet was a liar.
“Janet, you can stay over on that side of the room” I stated to her.
“Why, what have I done?” she replied
“Nothing as you said. You where lying to us so you can stay away from us”. Then I crossed her name off the list. I heard a rattle then a scream, I ran towards where the noise had come from, Janet was lying on the floor, I shook her, no response. Then I saw the blood, coming from her head, she was dead, I shouted
“Hey guys”
“J.......J.....Jane is dead” I stammered in shock. Joe came over and saw her limp, lifeless body, staring straight at us. I then noticed another envelope half hanging out of her pocket.
“Look, another envelope” I exclaimed. Joe took the envelope and opened it,
“There are 4 left and one more will die, get to the right corner and you will stay alive” Joe read it out aloud. #then we heard a noise coming from the furthest corner away from us,
“No don’t” ignoring me Joe said
“I will have a look”. Joe went towards it and for 10 minutes we did not hear anything, then I saw somebody shivering in the corner, I went towards it and saw Joe was shivering because he had been stabbed. The wound was irregular, it was like a knife had cut but it had burn marks around the cut. The wound was huge about 12 inches on the side of his stomach. You could not see very well with a single candle flame but you could tell his intestines were injured as well. The others came over in a panic when they heard my screams.
“What the hell?” screamed Jenny,
“I do not know, I just saw him shivering”, I started to cry because a friend whom I trusted had died. Jareth bent down and pulled something from under Joe’s motionless body. It was an envelope stained with blood.
“Open it then” I cried, Jareth opened the envelope and began to read the note inside,
“There are 3 left, the next will disappear, no one will understand except I”.
“Who is the one?” I asked
“I don’t know” replied Jenny
“Well it isn’t me, I don’t think” Jareth said confused. I started to notice a light, coming from behind a piece of wood which was opposite the door. I tried to pull the off the wood but to no avail. Hearing a loud banging coming from behind me, I turned around to see Jenny trying to open the door in a blind panic, resuming trying to pull down the piece of wood I heard Jareth asking where jenny was but there was no reply.
“Where has Jenny gone? She could not have got out of here” I asked Jareth. I then realised that Jenny had vanished and all that was left was an envelope. Opening this envelope was difficult because I was shaking uncontrollably with terror now. Inside this envelope there was not a letter but three keys and a cassette.
“Play the tape please” I asked Jareth. Holding the candle up so I could watch his every move now because I was terrified he was the killer, we went over to the machine and Jareth put in the tape and pressed play.
“2 are left, 1 will escape and the other will vanish, but what to do with the keys?”
“I will try them in the lock” exclaimed Jareth. Jareth took the keys and tried to unlock the door, meanwhile I was still trying to pull off the piece of wood. All of a sudden I fell backwards with the wood in my bare hands. This hole revealed an old wooden staircase, covered in spider webs and looked very rickety. Blinking and squinting from the now bright light I turned around to call Jareth but he was no longer in the room with me. MY eyes now adjusted to the light I saw a piece of paper on the floor with the three keys. On the paper, written in blood were the following words, you are the one, the one that is clear, use these keys wisely and you will find out your escape from here. At the bottom of the stairs there was a box, going towards the box I could see it was chained up and a padlock attached. I tried the keys and the third key unlocked the chain. Opening the box I found a gold coin and another letter, it read you saved your life so go up the stairs there will be a prize awaiting you at the top.

Running up the stairs I started to get excited at the prospect of getting out of here, but had a heavy heart thinking about the four who did not make it. Reaching the top I saw sitting on a chair something staring at me. I froze. It looked like a mutant, no hair, the eyes were like wolf eyes, red and bloodshot. His nose was hairy and crooked and his skin looked scaly just like a fish. He was wearing a dark green jacket unbuttoned, underneath you could see a pale orange t-shirt and his jeans were black with holes in the knees. The feet were like hooves of a goat. Seeing such a retching, monstrous site I fainted. When I awoke I found myself strapped to a chair with a knife in one hand and a tape player in the other. The knife was covered with thick, red, sticky substance which looked like clotting blood, it had a whitish handle that was faded with time and the blade, were you could see, was polished silver. The tape player was partly black and the rest was covered with the same clotting blood as the knife. In my head I thought, here we go again.

To be continued.......................................